Baitadi, Mar. 11: The newly constructed four-room Gadadev Basic School in Pancheswar Rural Municiaplity-1 in Baitadi district locked by the contractor for almost one and a half years has been reopened.  

The school’s classrooms were padlocked by the officials of the construction company after the cost of the building exceeded the agreed amount.  The school building was constructed during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Panchewar Rural Municipality Office-1 opened the classrooms by breaking the locks in the presence of the police administration, as the students compelled to study under the open sky started falling sick. The final exams were approaching, and it was very inconvenient for the students to study sitting in the open air without proper furniture and a roof over their heads.

Keshav Singh Ghatal, chairman of the construction committee, padlocked the building of the School after Rs. 7.9 million was spent against the contract amount of Rs. 3.6 million. 

Rural municipality chairman Gor Bahadur Chand said that the school’s classrooms were opened on Saturday with the help of the police. 

He said that it was decided to open the padlocked classrooms, dissolve the school management committee and ask the headmaster for clarification in this regard. 

After the old building of Gadadev Basic School was swept away by a landslide, a new building was built under the President Educational Reform Programme in the fiscal year 2021-22. 

Although there was an agreement with the School Management Committee to construct the building, the Management Committee gave the responsibility to Keshav Singh Ghatal, a local youth and contractor.

Engineer Ghanashyam Mainali of Pancheswar Rural Municipality said that the cost of the four-room building increased to Rs. 5.8 million as the price of construction materials skyrocketed due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. Although the Municipality had given Rs. 5.8 million to the contractor, the contractor didn’t come to collect the money and instead, they padlocked the school. Ghatal had been demanding Rs. 7.9 million for the construction of the school.

“The building is very well built, but how can we pay Rs. 7.9 million,” questioned Mainali. From a technical point of view, the payment cannot be more than Rs. 5.8 million, and other buildings of a similar nature have been constructed for Rs. 3.6 million, he said. 

Ghatal claimed that Rs. 7.9 million was spent on the construction of the building due to the skyrocketing prices of wood, cement and petroleum products during the pandemic.